caught in the downpour
by Aiko Isari
Summary: Positions are gradual and violent and chilly and malleable, until your new blood comes or the curse takes you right. Hikari finds every door shut to her again when her mark arrives, but she's going to fight to shove them open, for herself and for everyone she loves. AU
1. Chapter 1

**_A/N:_** Author's note instead of warning. I want to talk about this here, loud and clear because this is a crossposted fic. This is an ABO AU. I repeat. _This is an ABO AU._ That said, **there will be no sexual content as of this posting.** For one thing at this point in the story they're kids. For another, I'm not interested in it and everyone has covered that part of the story to death in other fandoms. This is about everything else. There will be discussions of puberty and sexual topic eventually I think, hence the rating of M at this point. If people think this fic's rating needs to be changed, please let me know.

Warnings: gender dysphoria, trans female character, ABO, eventual discussions of child abuse and malnourishment.

* * *

 **arc one**

 _Prologue – Countdown (Age Eight)_

Classifications don't matter when you're young. At least, they shouldn't.

It really shouldn't mean anything, it shouldn't be true ever, but eight year old Hikari is only that by name and spirit, she can change nothing about herself.

To the world, she is eight year old Yagami _Hikaru_ and it burns her, burns her and her brother in turns because if she doesn't get the right mark, nothing will change, nothing will grow, nothing will get better and damn that, damn that so much the sky feels it.

Only now does she hate human conventions, human feelings, human everything.

Maybe her father was right and the human world was worth abandoning. They demanded everything of her, bright shorts, quick runs and she could do none of it. None. Well, not true, she could do some of it. Not enough and it wouldn't matter soon.

So she stays as eight year old Yagami Hikaru and only responds to her dead name when she has to and when she hears her brother call her name ignores every scowl and sneer and derisive look that she can.

It shouldn't even matter, really. She _hasn't_ presented and she wouldn't for a few more years. It was how her mother had been. She had presented at the reasonable age and as a reasonable type and no matter how much was blocked from her she continues to move forward in a way that makes their dad absolutely crazy. With love.

They think.

Hikari wants to be like her. Wants her classification to poof up and become a weapon that lets her cleave doors open and make every moment count.

She's young enough to believe that's going to happen and she needs it to happen as soon as possible.

She ought to be careful what she wishes for.

…

Everyone is classified as something.

Everyone. Like the outdated pack hierarchies thought of wolves and the old societal norms of the present, everyone presented by the latest twenty-five, when a person's growth completed. Of course no one wanted to present that late, everything in life was wrapped up in neat little bows by then, but it had happened.

Some people called it a secondary gender or class, some called it "the inner beast".

Her brother would call it a pain in the ass. Publicly. Loudly. He had gotten kicked off of soccer practice for it once. (And behind his back called an alpha through and through.)

Hikari keeps her nose in a book and learns every name for it, every possibility. She had once heard one of her brother's friend say that knowledge was power and Hikari desperately needed power.

Before the revelation of classifications, society had focused on the primary gender, the race and ethnicity and the class of an individual.

Despite the importance still placed on these primary details, even more hinged on the presentation of the secondary class. Every rank had their niche, their selectable careers, their choices in life. That was what made presenting by high school so essential, every book said. What if you had gotten a job in one ranking area and you presented as something else? It was a whole government fiasco trying to "correct the mistake" and get them a job better suited to temperament.

Alphas thrived on competition.

Betas belonged in communication.

Omegas loved to nurture..

There were simple, fine lines, no in-betweens, no concerns. And in the end that was why Hikari would either get what she wanted or have to hide what she was for the rest of her life.

Or move, but she doesn't particularly want to do that either. That cost money.

So she had to live on like this, hoping for a part of her body to make sense one day. Being a beta would be nice. They could communicate and educate and grow. They didn't have the natural (was it really natural? Was it really?) urge to take and make and pursue the way alphas and omegas did. The two, in the end, were more alike than any of the research wanted to admit. The only difference was who did what in the end.

But Hikari doubted that was enough. There were always more fine print details.

Did they apply to her? She didn't know.

She was not a person of knowledge. She was rarely curious. She was instinctive.

Looking back, she should have known what that would mean for her. She'd read enough books after all.

…

In the weeks leading up to that special summer day, a thrumming sensation built underneath her skin. It was nothing like what her parents said would happen to her when she… changed. And Taichi hadn't had his. It was much, much too young! So it probably wasn't that. She hoped it wasn't. Hikari had no idea what she wanted to do when she grew up, but she didn't want to have no choice at all right now!

Also the monsters appearing in the background were coming out more and more. They hardly did anything, but you were much more likely to need to change your clothes after one appeared. Not that anyone noticed. Not even her brother noticed and bringing it up always left that worried crease in his brow. So Hikari took the hint and stopped talking about it.

She managed to keep this up until right around June. That was when, if her brother had watched enough anime with her, would have said she stepped right into the first episode of one with the mysterious transfer student that caught the main character's eye and changed the world by breathing.

Because a girl and a boy stepped into their classroom one day, holding hands. The girl took the lead, thin shoulders up straight. The boy didn't seem to care for the state of his shoulders or his hands, regarding them all with dark eyes like coal and stars. He shamelessly looked about the room, leveling his eyes on every single one of them.

Everyone in her class was staring at them, the teacher included. People did not hold hands in their home unless they were mated. It was just rude, insulting, demeaning. There were other words people used, but Hikari wasn't sure how to say them.

And she didn't care to. She _liked_ these two at the sight alone.

"Everyone," she heard the teacher say and reluctantly turned to look at him instead. "We have some students transferring in today. This is Tsukino Sayo and Kamishiro Yuugo."

Both children bowed a little, barely enough to not get whispers. Of course whispers broke out anyway. But it couldn't mean much. Papa always said children didn't have much to offer anyone with information unless they searched really hard for it. So Hikari tuned them out as people shifted and the two of them were directed to their seats. They were right next to each other. Their hands separated and though it was silent, Hikari _felt_ like she could hear it.

And something, something like yearning, built up in her stomach.

She ignored it. She wanted too many things anyway. Instead she focused on passing up her homework and the newest math problems on the board. She didn't even know what that feeling meant.

But the class didn't forget them. Lunch rolled around and the class proceeded to rush the boy's desk. To his credit he seemed to not mind as they sent question after question at him and ignored the girl on the other side. She also didn't seem to mind. Her eyes were squinted with focus as she read her book. The hat on her head drooped and slipped off of her head. Hikari moved from her chair and snatched it from the air. The girl twitched and looked over at her. Not startled, but slowly, the girl moved her head to look at her. And Hikari's vision was full of purple.

Bright purple, solemn purple, soft and puzzled and cored with something chilly. The eyes just kept looking right as hers as if they were going to go through her and down to the heart beating in her chest. As if on cue, it started to thump louder.

"You." Hikari swallowed. "Your hat was falling off."

The girl blinked, like an owl. Then a small smile blossomed over her face, soft and warm and happy. "Thank you," she said. She took the hat gently, noting each frayed thread and running her thumb over the brim. "I'm Sayo. Who're you?"

For a moment, Hikari hesitated. She could hear the whispers around her, see the eyes. One pair was the teacher passing by, which could not mean much of anything and at the same time mean everything.

She remembers Taichi's voice that day on the soccer field, when he invited Izumi Koushiro from the bleachers and from the book and the insistent tapping of his laptop. "All you haveta do is try once with someone. Trying a second time is optional."

So she would try once. "I'm Yagami Hikari."

There's a scoffing snort from behind her, but Sayo looks at her with some sort of wonder. "Hikari-chan," she says and her name, her real name feels warm in her ears. "Nice to meet you. Yuugo, we have a friend! A new, shiny friend."

There was a shuffling all around them, all pleased with them as the boy moved and settled next to them. "Anyone who holds the sacred hat without flinching is a friend," he tells her.

And Hikari's chest warms again.

"What'd you bring for lunch?" she asks, and it's over, for a moment, as the other children come around and cluster their desks together. But all the same, there are extra little smiles from the two of them and her comfortably squashed in the middle. As if she is somehow home away from home.

* * *

 ** _A/N:_ **So, if you're still here, thank you for sticking through it. If you work with me, I hope this will be a wonderful slow burn of "how many ways can I make this trope a little less cringey for myself. Happy belated birthday Verse! I hope this was what you were hoping for! Also a ginormous thank you to verse themselves, who was willing to put up with me ranting and raving about this trope and the many world building bits I came up with to try and tune it differently.

Challenges: Mega Prompts Quote Prompt 217, halloween advent day 3,


	2. Chapter 2

_Chapter Two - Roasted (Age Eight)_

Everything people said to do was to adhere. To read the atmosphere, to follow the crowd, to obey what the world told you was true, before you dared to think outside of it. A person could not move outside the lines until they had seen all of what there was inside of them.

This was the truth of people, said her former friends, said a lot of people.

Taichi, like he did many things, only went along with it with one foot and a free hand. The rest of him found this stupid.

Hikari, deep down, agreed with him. And they would turn out similarly because of this spirit.

The main difference between these two siblings was how much they cared about what they cared about, and how much they could endure before they could fall apart. And it was hard to say who could do more or less.

To Hikari, it was too soon to know how much or how little she could carry. Her arms were too small to carry anything more than herself and they didn't have the strength to try.

* * *

Soon Hikari's group of friends grew. It wasn't much, but compared to the way the other girls had taken to avoiding her ever since she had started abandoning _Hikaru_ (kind and gentle boys were a rarity at this age if you didn't know where to look, her father said, and therefore she was less interesting), this was plenty.

Yuugo had a sister. They had a friend each. Nokia was a loud mass of pink, Arata a confident blue. They tended to fight, sometimes loud, sometimes with little jabs of noise or fingers and other times with obscure math grades or drawings that even to Hikari looked like scribbles. Sayo was the odd one out. She was there for no reason at all.

And yet that wasn't true at all.

"We're going to marry her," Yuugo tells Hikari one day, and because they are children, Hikari believes him, and she's struck with a horrible envy. They already know what they want to do with their lives, with that thing everyone wants Hikari to think about. "We're going to be together and sell flowers and make incense."

"And run Mama and Papa's company," Yuuko adds. The siblings are scary in how alike they are, twins of a mind, who rarely fought in words, but in nudges and slaps and petty thievery. The class couldn't handle them both when they were in the same place, because that was the time they tended to like each other most. And they were of a mind about the things that they wanted, and the people that they wanted to be with.

"What will Hikari-chan do though?" Nokia asked this between bites of a tomato.

(None of them have least favorite foods. None of them refuse anything. They look distraught at the thought of refusing even when they should be.)

"She's new. Where would she go?" Nokia asks the question not with uncomfortable noise and mocking sorrow, but clear purpose. Nokia is nothing if not honest. Taichi thinks she's a riot. Hikari thinks she's a little odd, but also nice.

...Wait a minute, what? _Her_?

"With Sayo, obviously." Arata rolls his eyes like Hikari, like none of them, should be confused. "Showing kids how to plant things and what makes houses smell good and how to make your own paint."

Hikari knows how to do absolutely none of this, but she wants to. She wants to so badly and she is too young to word why.

When she voices this to her brother on the way home, he tells her that it's nice she has not in that patronizing way teachers use.

Friends. Yes. She has friends. She wants them to be happy. She wants to be with them while they're happy.

Hikari is not used to hunger like this, this possessive feeling. She doesn't quite know what to do with the sensation.

* * *

She's sick.

It's gross and weird and hot. It's a summer cold, everyone says and it sucks. So she can't go on the trip with her brother, with her friends. She has to sit alone at home and stay in bed and drink miso soup (she _hates_ miso) and sometimes watch tv if she feels like walking over to the living room.

Which she doesn't.

Instead she buries her head under the covers as her parents go out to see grandma, the grandma that makes Mom all weepy and they're going to meet uncle so he can make his famous deadly hot soup to force the cure out of her body through willpower and sweat. It was so weird but it was funny to see him try so hard. No matter what Dad told him he kept trying to solve things with fire. Such a silly uncle she had.

And for a while she contented herself with waiting for them to return

That is, at least, until multiple, tiny, rapid knocks hit her door.

Hikari shot up straight, suddenly ice cold and not aching at all. "Hello?" she said, voice cautious, hackles rising. There were betas who liked to break into homes, Mom said, especially those with a known, absent alpha. It was nothing short of the highest insult and humiliation, her brother had said, all while scoffing. The only thing worse supposedly was an omega doing it but there were other words for that and Hikari barely understood these things anyway. All she knew was that there was a knock at the door.

"Hikari-chan!" chimed three voices from the other side. "Hikari-chan are you here?"

Hikari took a moment to blink from behind the safety of the doorframe. "Yuuko-chan?" (It was always funny her mom and her friend had the same name.)

"Hikari-chan!" A pause. "See, mama they do leave people alone in their homes here!"

A woman laughed. It was musical and a little low, like a noblewoman in those dramas her dad liked to watch when they were the only ones home. "Of course they do. THese are independent children, just like you." There was another knock, a little firmer this time. "Hikari-chan, may we come in?"

Hikari hesitated for a moment more. Then she opened the door.

"You look terrible!" Nokia said by way of greeting the second they could see each other.

"Nokia-chan, ssh!"

"You're so rude, honestly."

"What'd you say?!"

"Don't fight in the hall," intones a man, who had been standing there with a toddler on his hip, as casual as could be. "At least get inside where you can hurt yourselves on the coffee table."

The woman snorted. "They're not me yet, Dray."

"They might as well get a head start." He was a tall and pale man, almost sickly pale, with soft black hair that leaned towards dark blue. "Hello lass, I'm Draven. I'm Sayo's father. She's…" He looked around, only to find said little girl securely latched to his leg. He let out a sigh. "Lass, we talked about this. You're friends, you don't hide."

Sayo made a face at him, which was nothing like how she was at school. "Daddy…"

"Off," he said with a little smile. "She won't give you her cold."

Sayo hopped off the hiding spot reluctantly, still hiding a bit behind his waved, suddenly feeling a whole lot better now that she wasn't suffering this alone. Sayo peeked around and left entirely to get closer at that, smiling a little.

Hikari flushed, remembering her manners and letting them inside.

The woman - Rie, gosh Yuuko-chan and Yuugo-kun had a pretty mom!- set something up to warm, humming a little ditty the other children echoed from various areas of the living room. They hadn't strayed far. In fact Sayo was right next to her father in the same chair, making faces at the child blinking blearily on his shoulder.

"I thought everyone was going to camp?" Hikari finally manages to say, because thank you doesn't feel right, not enough.

"It's not fun camp if we're not all together," Arata said from his plopped spot on the floor, book in hand.

"We were worried about you!" Yuuko adds as she and Yuugo are tangled up in a brief wrestling match.

Hikari's heart warms all the more. "Thank you!"

"It's our pleasure," says Sayo's father, who smiles over the top of the child's head. "Also, if you don't mind, we would like to talk to you about something."

"Not even going to let her eat." Rie-san was smiling though, teasing and Hikari blinks.

"What is it?" Her eyes flicker out the window, then towards the blaring tv, where a white bear stumbles about to the screams of people.

Draven-san looks at her with sad knowing, too old knowing. "Do you know what Digimon are lass?"

It takes everything in Hikari's body not to physically fly apart, not to become what she was, not to answer without words.

"Yes," she whispers. "I do."

And Sayo sparkled.

"I was right, daddy," she says. "She's like us!"

"Just like," the twins echo. Arata and Nokia are nodding along, each looking between her and each other.

But the man looks grim. "I see." He exhales sharply, softly, freely. "Can you keep a secret lass?"

Hikari doesn't pause, doesn't think to pause. Because she is real, things are real, her thoughts are real in this moment. Her homeworld is not a fever dream her parents made up. She. Is. Real. "I can keep every secret."


End file.
